I don't know why he would suggest that your hacked version of the malware would be misattributed seeing as forensics would immediately figure out the malware was hacked to do something the "open" version was not created to do. By modifying the malware, you've put your fingerprints all over it. Regardless, this is all so dumb. When did being a script-kiddie become something you announced as though it made you cool? Anyone can take malware created by someone else and repurpose it to their own ends while having zero real expertise, so what? This is how the vast majority of "new" viruses are created already!

"created" is not, imo, the right word here. Gates "harnessed" the effort of a paid workforce to accomplish a larger goal. The goal was to sell lots of software, which he successfully did with the help of his paid workforce. Also IMO, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" is an example of taking advantage of an existing system, it does not speak to whether or not the system is effective or justified, which I feel is the underlying frustration for OP. The fact that a man can effectively harness a workforce to accumulate wealth on a massive scale on his behalf (even after he no longer has any direct involvement) is possible in our current economic model. Economists (correct me if i'm wrong) generally consider this a "Good Thing" because it provides the encouragement to entrepreneurs and investors to try out new things and to invest in new markets. However, this is not the only way to encourage these behaviours. Co-operatives, partnerships and shared-ownership models all have similar benefits and the wealth generally spreads out more effectively. Why aren't these more popular forms of management in the US? That is largely down to the fact that the US has been under the control of "CEO" style economics for the better half of this century and those CEOs have used their power to sway government to craft their regulations and rules (Taxes especially!) in a manner that makes CEO style management more entrenched. IMO, the result of this economic evolution is one in which we now suffer from economic "monoculture". If you're going to be a business owner or an investor, you play this game because it's the only game in town. The result is massive accumulation of power, growing inequality and a lack of innovation in the way companies are managed and structured. --my two cents

The fact that it takes only one dodgy company to cause so much damage to so many victims is the entire point. The technology may be 99.9% safe, it's the scale of the consequences of that last 0.01% that needs to be addressed adequately and in public view.

If that were true, they wouldn't be bringing attention to the problem and attempting to figure it out now would they? You're quite smug with your armchair assumptions about the motivations of others, fyi.

This sort of thinking only reinforces the idea that honesty, integrity and self-determination are not valuable qualities in student, or educational institution. The students who show up to class do so because they want to learn and expect to learn in the environment. The students that do not show up, do not have those expectations. Forcing students to show up only reinforces the idea that coming to class is about doing what you're told instead of being trusted to do what you need to do for your own learning experience. Educational institutions that do this sort of thing are not educational, they are abusing students and teaching them that their own self determination isn't valuable.

Just adding up the numbers included in this post we get $63.15M, divided by the 535 members of congress that's $118,000 spent per member to try to sway their votes. This is just top tech companies, one small segment of the total lobbying industry. What needs to be done to stop this corruption?

Massive corporations buying regulations that add a veneer of legitimacy to their incredibly anti-humanist implementations is as old a trick as there is. I can't wait for the politicians to scramble over each other to write it into law, for the usual fee.

The answer is that AI will eventually become smarter and more alive than Homo Sapiens, however, that is a long way away and it will not be anywhere near this level of sophistication in a package the size of your toy dog in the 100 years. What *will* happen is that all the intelligence will exist in large "cloud" servers just as it does now and the toy dog will just be an appliance that connects to the AI. Turning off the dog won't kill the AI any more than turning off your TV kills the actors in the shows.

This is a problem of Blizzard not being protected the way that licensed News publications are protected. If a guest comes onto a News show and says something offensive, you can't sue the News station because they have legal protections in place. Blizzard doesn't have the same protections, so they've adopted a policy of banning "free speech" in an effort to protect themselves. The real lesson here is that the Internet has created a world in which just about anyone can become a world-wide-publisher of speech, yet only licensed "news" has the legal protections to safeguard themselves from being sued into oblivion. In a perfect world, Free Speech would be protected in legislation and any company that "hosts" a platform for "guests" to speak should have the protection of the legal system. However, as we've seen from the "fake news" and political manipulation on Facebook, there can be some very unfortunate consequences when the platform enables mass-manipulation. In time, with a lot of lobbying and fighting for what's right, there should come a balance in the law that protects individual rights to Free Speech on all platforms while ensuring mass-manipulation gets shut down.

You want another FDA, for whom 9 of the last 10 commissioners left to become top tier execs in the industry they were expected to regulate?

So, let's compare this to the FDA. Some would argue that the FDA is just a training ground for senior executives in the Pharma Industry. Here you have an organization dedicated to learning and understanding the technology and industry, and are vital to informing politicians about those technologies, working for what is essentially minimum wage due to it being a government job. The inevitable result is that many of those who rise to the top of the FDA end up leaving to join large Pharma companies where they get nice cushy jobs. Some would argue this creates an incentive to bribe those Pharma companies with "good behaviour" while still at the FDA in order to procure cushy contracts and golden parachutes. For example: https://qz.com/1656529/yet-ano... Is this really what Americans need, again?

If investors are taking their money out of environmentally harmful stocks, then where does Mr. Gates think they're putting that money back in? Does he not understand that money taken out of those stocks both reduces capital for those industries, while moving itself to environmentally friendly stocks as a result?

You're wrong. https://www.theguardian.com/en... Smarten up or get off the Internet.

I have a residence with a separate apartment I rent out. I allow my tenants to use my WiFi and split the cost with them. They stream TV, but don't really play any games. I play a games once in a while and stream low-res (720) TV. The connection we share is 25Mb/1Mb and we have yet to have any issues. I can see how having a higher bandwidth could be nice when you need to download something large, but those who are suggesting that paying $5-10/mo must not value their own time very well. That's $60-120/year just so you can download a game or movie in an evening instead of overnight while you sleep. If you're so dependent on doing everything last minute, what are the rest of your expenses like?

If it's not generating the expected power, that's not the fault of the road. The study to determine how much power it should produce was faulty. All the necessary information to calculate what should be produced had existed before the road was built, so someone didn't do their due diligence to ensure the calculations were accurately representing the real-world scenario. In any case, solar roads make sense in one situation and one situation alone. Do they pay for their own energy and manufacturing costs? If the road can do that, it's a success. Otherwise, it's just an expensive and environmentally unfriendly "feel good" product, much like re-usable cotton bags that cost 100-200x the manufacturing energy/resources as cheap (and also re-usable!) grocery bags.